Batts and Wicked Lady

Last weekend was the annual Lambtown Festival in Dixon. This year I signed up for a class on blending fibers on a drum carder. My mom gave me her Petite Strauch carder in a round of cleaning out things she just wasn’t using, score! Until now I have only used it a few times myself on uncarded fiber but never for blending really.

Here you can see the two base wools (left) that I started with, the batt after two passes with some brown llama also mixed in (bottom right) and then the final batt with some copper Angelina Fiber for subtle sparkle (top right).  The class was taught by Keena Golden, she was a fun instructor and all the students had a great time. I wish there was time to snap photos of other folks batts but as it is I only got half my fiber blended. Keena teaches at Urban Fauna Studio so if you have a chance take one of her classes. For more photos from Lambtown, just click on the photo of the batts.

In other fiber news I have finished the garter stitch section of the body on my Wicked Lady Sweater.  In this photo (cropped to close in on the knitting) you can see it as I was checking the length of the garter yoke. Now I am on to the Gull Lace section. I want to try and get this finished before our trip to Wisconsin next month so I have something cute and warm to wear.

The classes for Stitches West 2011 went up this week, I signed up to take a class on double knitting with Melissa Leapman. Generally I just go to the market but I have wanted to take a class for a while and this is a technique I have been interested in for a while. Now that I have my registration in I am off to start queuing double knit patterns on Ravlery!

Catching Up

We moved to our first (rented) house last month. The most exciting part (for me at least) is that there is a basement, I will finally have a studio space all to myself!

The Berkeley Knitters all headed out to Meridian Jacobs Farm for another Shearing Day.

Will took a week off and went to Hawaii and he brought me back this fun sampler quilt kit as well as a very cute turtle pincushion.

There has been lots more but sadly the good camera died and my old digital eats batteries in about 10 min so all I have in the way of a camera is my phone which is less then ideal, but I will try to photograph stuff as I can and hopefully we will get the good camera fixed soon (hurray for warranties!)

In the mean time I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!  (Or if you aren’t in the USA a wonderful day)

Blue Yarn and Wooly Batts

Another dye experiment in acid dye blues for Libby. She is keeping this one.

We played around with the drum carder that I rescued from my mom who hasn’t used it in years. We were pretty impressed how the random end bits of roving Libby had became nice fluffy batts. Can’t wait for Libby to try spinning some on her drop spindle.

Now I just need to get some of the fleece I have washed up and do some of my own carding, which is what the carder was rescued for in the first place.